I’m going to be civil. I would appreciate a little bit of reciprocity, and if you could avoid poisoning the well, that would be nice, too.
I’ve not said anything of the sort.
Because, as I recently concluded, for an agorist to be successful he needs to effectively manage risk. This is where traditional black-markets, “counter-economies” fail. If, your business can only increase its revenue by increasing its expenses, it’s not becoming more profitable. If your business can only increase revenue by increasing its exposure to systematic risk, then you’re better off playing roulette at the Casino. You have a much smaller chance of getting shot.
Economies of Scale is really a euphemism for special privileges and immunities. Big Business is only as big as it is, because governments allow them to exploit people. This might be exploiting them here, or it might be exploiting them overseas. But its a market distortion parading as efficiency. To paraphrase Bastiat, you’re simply ignoring “that which is not seen.”
Nope. I sure can’t. Then again, I don’t imagine a free economy that would drain our productivity in the same manners that the current system does. Anecdotally, I spend $7,000 a year to pay for, maintain, insure, and fuel my car, just to get to work and back. That doesn’t count leisure travel. Practically everyone I know needs a car, and the principal reason they need it one is so they can drive an hour each way to and from some job they hate just so they can earn enough money to pay for the damned thing!
I can imagine an economy that doesn’t depend on subsidized sprawl and corporate welfare to provide for man’s needs. That’s a far cry better, IMO.
Whether we can get there, of course, is another story. Revolutions are never easy.
If enough people are involved, then sure, the drug wars will cease. But I don’t think the correct approach is to try and convince people to start making Meth in their basements. [:)] I think it’s far less risky to engage in counter-economic activity that isn’t the primary focus of a half-million armed thugs.
Large enterprises are almost always creatures of the state. Economies of scale would, in a truly free market, be counter-balanced by diseconomies of scale (results of Hayekian information problems, mostly, although I have seen arguments that the Misesian calculation arugment also applies).
Do you know anything at all about running a business? Once again provide a real world example of what you are talking about. Show me where the agorists manage risk and the regualar business doesn’t?
Yes, now the Marxism comes out. So the accumulation of capital for a business only occurs because of the state. I guess the idea that a person running a business would want to grow the business for their own benefit doesn’t conform with Marxism. Economies of scale occur because people naturally want to do things better, it has nothing to do with the government.
So in Agorism there is no longer large scale production of anything because…?
I thought individuals pursuing their own needs was what we were striving for…perhaps at the end of agorism we have to rely on the cadre to provide for man’s needs eh comrade. From each according to his worth to each according to his need…is that the agorist motto?
So in a free market you are saying that there are no large businesses? That heavy machinery and large scale construction will be done by a couple of guys working in their basement? That there will be no organizations specializing in international trade that requires…oh I don’t know…large scale shipping and transportation.
The more the agorists talk the more absurd your ideology becomes.
Once again provide an example of how the production of a current large business (like 747 construction) will operate in your agorist free society without being a large business.
The discussion was about how a business ought to manage risk and how black-market/counter-economic organizations generally don’t.
No, I’ve not said anything of the sort. All I’ve said is that the scale of businesses with which we’ve become familiar is a product of a profoundly distorted market.
Monetary gain is the most basic example of profit. When unsophisticated people talk about profit, they mean monetary gain. When Agorists talk about profit, they talk about monetary gain, but also other gains - like the solidarity gained with other Agorists by organizing, for example.
In any case, what is the problem when Agorism is used to overthrow the state?
You don’t think the free-market should replace the state?
The Agorist ideology is purely to overthrow the state and reach the free-market society. Does the free-market contradict your desires?
No, it would be different sans the ideology anyways. The difference is the doctrine. No other group currently out there wants to gather and minimize risk on an aggregate basis. All individuals want to minimize their own risks, but they do not consider the rest of their market. It is an example of a tragedy of the commons, I think.
What are you talking about? I’m responding right now.
But it’s flawed for the purposes you are using that example.
She obviously wants as much business, as quickly as possible to get the needed money. So she’s in it for the “fast buck” pun intended.
But again, what is the difference between her activity and the activity of a drug addict who sells their body for drugs? In that she needs money, she is driven to produce profit, and in that the drug addict needs drugs, purchased with money or in barter of sex, he is also driven to profit, to improve his condition.
I don’t think your example proves what you want it to prove, and is not really relevant to the discussion.
Besides Nicky, is anyone else seeing a connection I am missing?
All she wants is a little extra money. Once she reaches that, she wants less. This is an example of opportunity cost. There is a higher opportunity cost for her to expand her “business” than there would be to get the money and go.
Now, you’re bringing a temporal concept into the equation. That would have been fine, had you not objected to the much more obvious temporal implications I provided for Agorism.
Again, the prostitute wants the money. She only wants X amount of dollars. Once she gets X amount of dollars she will no longer want to expand her business, period.
Assume she receives X amount, what is she going to do then? Expand? No. She’s going to decrease her production. This is also common in retirement.
The counter-economy currently possesses few safe-guards for counter-economic activity. Yes, individuals protect themselves slightly, but there is no formal organization that contracts to do it for them. To make production secure. To watch out for statists and police.
Something like that has been created on a smaller scale in teh Milwaukee area. Success has occurred.
Black markets don’t manage risk. Your joking right? Black market actors are almost always intensively focuses on risk because they explicitly do not have the state to protect them. What example are you thinking of?
The counter-economy has plenty of groups that look out for the police and statist activity. Have you ever been in a neighborhood that has high levels of crime, they have lookouts everywhere and they can spot cops in about five seconds. Not to mention gangs which are in part formed to protect the activity of the gang. How about the drug gangs in Mexico which are quite powerful and have undermined various parts of the Mexican judicial system. Those are jsut two examples all accomplished without agorist ideology.
I don’t think I ever said that people in business don’t have obstacles or that there might be other incentives that might make people decide to limit their business activity. What that means is that people are pursuing their own self-interest. Are you saying that the goal of agorism is to convince people to pursue things contrary to their own self-interest?
No, I’m absolutely not joking. Black markets depend on the State to keep their potential for profit artificially high.
If you have an operation growing drugs in your basement, for your own consumption, it’s impossible to get caught unless you’re an idiot. If you scale, you start incurring additional risk, and at each level of scale the risk becomes greater. This is the financial equivalent of simply doubling a losing bet when playing casino games.
Moreover, this prisoner’s dilemma faces every agency on the black market: any individual “firm” benefits if it can eliminate some of its rivals. Maybe they do this through a turf war, maybe they bribe the State to crack down on them, etc. But all firms face this incentive. The result is a Pareto sub-optimal solution to the game.
The ideological difference with an agorist, is that nobody is going to try and wield the ham-fist of the State against their trading partners because they understand that an abundance of goods and services is the true indicator of wealth in an economy, not high prices propped up in one way or another by government violence.
Dude. You know damn well that I can’t even tell you how to build a pencil, let alone a 747.
What you’re asking is, “How does David_Z/Niccolo/Etc. propose that Agorism will preserve the exact same economic system that we currently have?”
No, what I am asking is why do you think large scale businesses will not form in a free society. You and your fellow agorists made the statement that large business is only a creation of the state. I am simply pointing out with a real world example that your wrong.
So is the agorist supposed to be self-sufficient or grow the counter-economy? If you don’t expand beyond your basement how does the agorist have the exponential effect that Niccolo says they do?
I am not missing the point. There isn’t a point. Provide some examples in the real world if you can.
I’m not saying that “no” large scale business will form in a free society, only that the likelihood of companies operating on the scale with which we’re familiar is not terribly likely. Every large company, and a lot of medium-sized ones, too, suffer from the same calculation problem that Mises and Hayek described under socialism. They are able to overcome this, to an extent, thanks to certain privileges granted by state governments: these may be in the form of tax incentives, laws regulating their competitors, limited liability asset-shielding, etc.
No, you’re trolling. Your “real world examples” rely on a set of assumptions that don’t hold in a free market. I shouldn’t have to explain to you how, for instance, the concept of “limited liability” is a massive state subsidy.
I’m not sure why you’re asking me to explain something that Niccolo said. My point is that you can expand beyond your basement, as long as you can effectively manage risk. Playing tit-for-tat with a government which simultaneously helps and hinders you (e.g., a drug cartel) is not effective risk management, it’s a roll of the dice.
You could effectively operate on a “black-market” in an area where the government is not prepared or equipped to surveill you constantly. These may be nominally unprofitable, like a local food co-operative. Maybe you grow food and your neighbor home schools or sits for the kids, and the guy across the street fixes everyones lawnmowers and furnaces and the old lady bakes everyone apple pies. In a sophisticated version, you might trade with something really valuable, like gold. In a less-sophisticated system, you’ll probably resort to some combination of bartering and social credit.
You’re not going to make a billion Federal Reserve Points by working as an agorist, but what you’re going to do is increase, if only to a small extent, your own freedom and that of the others with whom you interact.
One thing that people seem to keep overlooking is that agorism is not limited to secret, underground, black market activities. Or if it is, then there are other ideologically driven and guided countereconomic methods that can be pursued in addition. Above-ground alternative institutions such as private provision of security, arbitration and adjudication services, and attempts to bring back the gold standard despite the state (for some at least, ideally as part of undermining the state itself) by, for example, a gold-tracking mutual fund with checking. I’ve given an example several times of one libertarian private security and restitution service that is currently in the planning stage. Private security and arbitration services are booming industries right now though. It would be better if more of them were driven and guided by libertarian anarchist ideas and goals.